BAT Alberto Cornejo, Moret Art, Zielinsky and Jorge Alcolea Galleries

If there is something especially captivating about the portrait genre, that it is the gaze. For some time the importance of the characters portrayed does not reside exclusively in symbols of power but in the ability to capture psychological essence achieved by the portraitist, being precisely the gaze that gives the portrayed greater psychic depth. In addition, when, the eyes of the portrayed figure look directly at the spectator, there is an astonishing tension, a kind of restlessness that requires dialogue, which exhibits provocation. The power of the gaze seems eternal as if it had a greater consistency able to expose the contained intimacies.

José Ramón Lozano

Sin Título (VI), 2019

Acrylic on canvas

170 x 190cm

However, if the gaze can reflect a person's state of mind in an exceptional way, it can also hide it, make it confusing and inaccessible to external eyes that try to penetrate it. To identify or not to identify, the gaze expresses at the same time unique beings for some, similar ones to others, transcendental or insignificant. Both from the moral and aesthetic standpoint, those portrayed who look at us, who look at us in reality from our contemplation of the present, create a direct tension with the past and identity. Always with a cryptic like air, as the portrait prooves what we shall never be, what we are at the time that the photograph was taken or the portrait was painted, that sense of Barthes’ "this has been", these images are predicting our end.

Lantomo

Dim light-dark sea 1, 2019

Graphite and pastel on paper glued to wood

100 x 73cm

Within the great proposal of the BAT Gallery Alberto Cornejo (Madrid) what precisely stands out is the portraiture genre. The women portrayed by José Ramón Lozano usually look at us very consciously, almost demanding that we contemplate and finish the story that they themselves have opened. They have something memorable, a turning point in a possible story of internalized solitude so often accompanied by pain. Very different are the portraits of Lantomo (Antonella Montes), more intimate, more reserved. While the use of graphite, watercolour and pastel is one of the reasons that explains that the figures acquire these characteristics, so is the fact that their characters do not always look at us, but are absorbed in their thoughts and do not require the empathy of the observer.

Maria Svarbova

No Diving, Smykacka, 2016

Photography

70 x 70cm

Marta Sánchez Luengo

Llegará, 2016

Bronze and iron

102 x 121cm

Another of the most outstanding portrait artists of our times is Mária Švarbová, a photographer from which the BAT gallery will present a selection of their individual and collective portraits. We attend the portrait of childhood and the beginning of adolescence in stages of meticulous harmony, of bodies so perfect and similar that touch the dreamlike fiction. On the other hand, the figures included by Marta Sánchez Luengo In their sculptures are much more than natural and close, they are realistic. In fact, their naturalistic way of modelling and the attitudes of their characters, as every day as reading a book, waiting for the underground or just walking around thinking, can certainly remind us of the realists from Madrid and especially of some pieces by the master Julio López Hernández. Leticia Felgueroso’s works could also relate to the realists because they share the passion for portraying the city of Madrid, although in the case of Felgueroso is through photography and intervened chromaticism.

Gustavo Díaz Sosa

De la serie de Revelaciones y Encrucijadas, 2019

Técnica mixta sobre madera. Cara A

200 x 140cm

In this daily work proper of the great metropolises, the contemporary society is also exposed very well: multitudes of people who move on full of worries and anxieties, between haste, jams and "deadlines". This guided mass is a topic that Gustavo Díaz Sosa tends to reflect in series such as "Burócratas y Padrinos", "Huérfanos de Babel" or the most recent "Revelaciones y Encrucijadas". The imposed social behaviours also removed from natural impulses, is a subject that also concerns Rubén Martín de Lucas, of whom a selection of the series "The Garden of Fukuoka" is presented, work in which the Guest Artist of this edition confronts industrial and natural processes.

The BAT proposal closes with the all rounded shapes of the sculptures by Carlos Albert and Carlos Iglesias, Madrid successors of the Basque School of sculpture; the most fluid and sensual works in aluminium by Rafael Amarós; and the matter and lyrical abstractions of Fernando Palacios.

Lino Lago

Fake Abstract (F. Boucher), 2019

Oil on canvas

160 x 150cm

Daniel Sueiras

Sir Kristoff Tar Toffen the 3rd, 2019

Oil on board

93 x 80cm

Watch and reveal, play with what is hidden and what is shown, is a very particular feature of the Lino Lago portraits, an artist who participates in Art Madrid with the Moret Art gallery (A Coruña). This gallery will also present some of the latest works by Daniel Subeiras, such as the painting "Sir Kristoff Tar Toffee the 3rd" (2019), where the author introduces us to the new addition to his ingenious and extensive gallery of portraits, notable for its humorous component and by his masterful control of the oil-on-board technique. Along with the work of Subeiras, a selection of the sculptural work by Iván Prieto is presented: pieces made from its technical characteristic-ceramics after painted with acrylics-in which contemporary bodies, always defective, without abandoning the crave of an impossible and imposed perfection, they are exaggeratedly distorted to the point of reaching surrealistic, extravagant, more beautiful forms.

Xurxo Gómez-Chao

Magnolia y calavera (Tempus fugit), 2018

Photography. Mineral pigments on Ilford Prestige paper 270 g

100 x 100cm

Moret Art will also include in its proposal the pieces by Miguel Piñeiro, contemporary still lifes of icons from the culture of our time, especially surprising for the high degree of hyperrealism; and the photographs by Xurxo Gómez-Chao, of which two of his lines of work are presented: on the one hand, a set of the beautiful vanitas stagings, and on the other, his more mystery images of rooms, in which a kind of mist seems to have evaporated the previous presence.

Pachi Santiago

Cerca desde lo masculino, 2012

Light box

42.5 x 32.5cm

Juan Fielitz

Desnudo III, 2018

Hahnemühle paper

120 x 74cm

Within the proposal of the Zielinsky Gallery (Barcelona) it is worth highlighting the work of Pachi Santiago, artist who offers the most explicit game around identity, gaze, codes of representation and appropriation, as we see in the broad project "Copying Claudia", in which the spectator can take part in the same feelings. The appropriation, manipulation and interest in the ways of portraying the human body, is something that he shares with the artist Juan Fielitz who, on the opposite, hides the faces or body parts that we would like to see from the portrayed. Thus, in these images collected in archives, the artist stripped the portrayed of his identity, offering in his final photomontages a poetic ensemble of enigmatic fragments.

Yamandú Canosa

Vértice, 2016

Oil on wood

47.2 x 40cm

Zielinsky will also expose the photographs by Eduardo Marco, in which an attentive and contemplative look allows us to repair in the beauty that so often goes unnoticed in the big city; surreal and pop worlds, full of winks in which to recognize ourselves, by Joaquín Lalanne; and the cartographies by Yamandú Canosa, metaphors of our being, of our way of living: at the end portraits of emotions that explain our displacement.

Eloy Morales

Figure 1, 2018

Oil on canvas

100 x 100cm

Some gazes are unique, such as those achieved by Eloy Morales in his huge portraits and self-portrait, that the Jorge Alcolea gallery will show. As the artist explains, for him "the important thing is to show through the work your way of seeing things and the way you present them to the spectator" always maintaining a deep concern for "the tremendous power of the image and its endless possibilities." Other gazes, equally interesting and perhaps more unfathomable, are those from the animal world, some like the bears that star in the latest works by Miguel Macalla.

Isidre Tolosa

Diarios, carpeta y libros, 2018

Mármol de calatorao y hierro

11 x 30cm

Jorge Alcolea's proposal is completed with the urban and nocturnal portraits by Carlos Azañedo, those in which the postmodern city never stops never sleeps and each one of us is only "another one". Also in its stand you will be able to see the realistic sculptures by Isidre Tolosa, personal objects like books or diaries that, likewise, can be the best portraits of ourselves because of everything so personal that they reveal; and the paintings by Isabel Ramoneda, free and careless abstractions on paper accompanied by handwritten thoughts.

Multiple gazes for multiple identities; always open works, eternally expectant in front of the possible gaze of the spectator: these are some of the works that can be enjoyed in the new edition of Art Madrid.

NEBRIJA UNIVERSITY ASSERTS AESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE IN THE FACE OF THE ALGORITHMIC ERA AT ART MADRID’26

The Nebrija Space hosts a curatorial project that proposes a critical alternative to the automation of creative thought.

Nebrija University is participating in the 21st edition of Art Madrid with a curatorial project that offers a critical reflection on the relationship between art education, the market, and technology. Under the concept of Aesthetic Intelligence, the proposal positions itself as an alternative to the algorithmic logic of Artificial Intelligence, prioritizing sensitivity, gesture, materiality, and experience as forms of knowledge that cannot be automated.

At a historic moment in which Artificial Intelligence is bursting onto the scene in all areas of cultural production, generating both fascination and concern, Nebrija University is committed to defending those dimensions of the artistic experience that remain irreducible to algorithmic logic. This is not a question of denying the impact of technology or adopting a technophobic stance, but rather of identifying and defending those areas of knowledge that require the presence of the body, sensitivity, gesture, and lived experience.

Álvaro Fernández. Remember/Forget. Mixed media on canvas. 40 x 60 cm. 2026.

The central concept of the proposal is that of Aesthetic Intelligence, understood as a form of knowledge that integrates the sensory, the affective, the intuitive, and the cultural. In contrast to the logic of Artificial Intelligence, based on algorithms, recognition patterns, and the capacity for mass replication, Aesthetic Intelligence prioritizes dimensions that remain anchored in the unique human experience: the unique and unrepeatable gesture, the physical presence of the body in the creative act, the material texture of the supports and pigments, and the temporality of the creative process.

This claim takes on special importance in a context in which generative AI is capable of producing images in a matter of seconds, processing millions of previous visual references to synthesize new compositions. However, what the machine cannot replicate is precisely what constitutes the core of the aesthetic experience. The affective resonance of a specific color applied with a certain pressure on a specific surface, the intuitive decision that arises from the dialogue between the artist and the material, or the productive error that opens up unexpected paths.

Aesthetic Intelligence is thus understood as a form of epistemic resistance, a defense of those ways of knowing the world that cannot be automated because they are constitutively linked to the embodied, situated, and temporal experience of creative subjects.

Pablo Padilla Sadurni. ST. Repaired passe-partout and acrylic. 18 x 18 x 48 cm. 2026.

Under the provocative neologism NotanIA SipedagogIE, which encapsulates the conceptual proposal in its very formulation: “Not so much AI, more pedagogy.” This linguistic construction, which plays with the presence and absence of fragments of the words “Artificial Intelligence” and “pedagogy,” signals a clear stance on the role of artistic training in today's technological context.

It proposes a critical pedagogy that does not reject technology but refuses to subordinate artistic learning processes to the logic of efficiency, optimization, and reproduction that characterize algorithmic systems. Faced with the temptation to use AI as a shortcut or substitute for the creative process, this pedagogy vindicates the formative value of trial and error, material experimentation, and time devoted to exploration without a predetermined goal.

A pedagogy that is also defined as empathetic, in the sense that it recognizes and values the affective and relational dimension of artistic learning, which does not understand creation as an isolated individual act but as a process that involves emotional resonances, symbolic exchanges, and collective construction of meaning. The stand itself, conceived as a choral work, embodies this understanding of creation as a shared experience.

Verónica Bergua Tabuyo. Cartography of Uncle Pablo. Digital video. Edition: 1/5. 2:40 min. 2026.

The methodology proposed for the project is as rigorous as it is open to experimentation. Each participating student begins their creative process by poetically appropriating a verse, a stanza that will serve as the conceptual and emotional seed of the work. The choice of poetry, as a form of language that condenses multiple and ambiguous meanings, that works with sonic and visual resonances, that suggests rather than describes, constitutes an ideal starting point for a project that champions the ineffable, that which cannot be fully translated into code.

Starting with the selection of a verse, each artist has developed a mood board conceived as a board of atmospheres and, at the same time, as a sensitive cartography of the process. This resource allows the imagery of the verse to be expanded through objects, images, textures, materials, and other elements that resonate with the initial poetic experience. It is a tool that makes the process of intersemiotic translation visible: the transition from verbal to visual language, from textual to material, highlighting the transformations and shifts that occur along the way.

The next step involves developing a two-dimensional work that deliberately avoids written language. This restriction seeks to prioritize visual and material exploration over textual narrative, relying on the communicative power of form, color, texture, and composition. The work must speak for itself, without the need for verbal explanations to mediate between the piece and the viewer.

The creative process is conceived from an experimental logic similar to that of a laboratory, where trial, error, correction, and rehearsal are an integral part of the method. No predetermined result is sought; rather, the work is allowed to emerge from the dialogue between the initial intention and the possibilities (and resistances) of the materials.

Blanca Lanaspa. Witness 176.8. Mixed media ceramics. 40.8 x 176.8 cm. 2026.

The booth that houses the Nebrija Space is conceived as a work of art in itself, with a choral and transitory character. Inspired by Madrid's SER Zones, those areas of regulated temporary parking, the exhibition space is designed as a territory of symbolic transit, a place of ephemeral occupation that invites reflection on presence, desire, and temporality.

This metaphor of SER Zones is particularly powerful, because just as these urban spaces allow for the temporary occupation of public space under certain conditions, the stand is presented as a territory that artists temporarily occupy during the fair, establishing a dialogue between permanence (the works as physical objects that will remain after the event) and transience (the specific spatial configuration that exists only during the days of the fair).

The choral nature of the project underscores the collective dimension of artistic creation. It is not a sum of individualities but a polyphony of voices that intertwine, resonate, and dialogue with each other. Each individual work maintains its autonomy but takes on new meanings in relation to the others, generating a fabric of visual, conceptual, and affective correspondences.

Marialex Arcaya. The wine cellar. Acrylic on wood. 80 x 160 cm. 2026.

The project brings together the work of seven students from the Fine Arts Degree program at Nebrija University: Marialex Arcaya develops “La bodega” (The Cellar), a reflection on everyday objects as containers of memory and identity. Based on the verse: "And at the bottom of my favorite beach bag there is sand, rusty coins, and a receipt for ice cream that no longer exists. Summer can be preserved in layers", the artist explores Venezuelan bodegas as spaces of nostalgia and belonging. Through a series of acrylic paintings on canvas depicting products and packaging, she investigates how the most mundane objects can function as repositories of memories and markers of cultural identity. Her work raises questions about what we erase and what we preserve, about how the passage of time transforms both objects and ourselves, celebrating the capacity for rebirth and transformation that characterizes the human experience.

Laura Nogales. Another Spring. Acrylic and embroidery on canvas. 94.5 x 38.6 inches. 2026.

Laura Nogales participates with “Another Spring,” a textile installation that explores the decomposition and deconstruction of the concept of femininity in a transitory environment: the shower. Her work, constructed from scraps, recycled clothing remnants, stockings, and various types of fillings, forms an abstract mass that represents decomposed femininity in constant mutation. The drain functions as a symbolic element that swallows everything, witnessing intimate transformations. Nogales addresses how femininity as a shared experience suffers great ups and downs in the current context, where machismo is making a strong comeback in the media and social networks. Her textile proposal generates emotional ambiguity in the viewer, who may feel attracted or repelled by the figure, reflecting the contradictions inherent in the experience of constructing and defending female identity in an adverse context. Her work takes as its reference the fragment of the poem: “Above the shower, the steam draws maps that fade away".

Inés López. Sedentary. Digital photography. 30 x 40 cm. 2026.

Inés López presents Sedentario, a work inspired by the verse: “There, dust particles are an archive in suspension.” The project reflects on the capacity of domestic spaces to preserve what the body forgets when they cease to be inhabited. The photographic series is set inside a house under construction, in rooms suspended between use and abandonment, where absence manifests itself as a silent accumulation of matter, traces, and time. Architectural plans and projections in an unfinished building expand the proposal, establishing a dialogue between the projected space and the lived space, between what was once inhabited and what has not yet begun to be inhabited. The work thus proposes a meditation on the transience of the body in the face of the silent persistence of architecture.

Verónica Bergua Tabuyo. Cartography of Uncle Pablo. Digital video. Edition: 1/5. 2:40 min. 2026.

Verónica Bergua presents “Cartografía del tío Pablo” (Uncle Pablo's Cartography), a deeply personal project that explores the relationship between compulsive hoarding, mental health, and emotional territory. Through a video installation that combines minimalist photography of objects taken from the room of her uncle, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Diogenes syndrome, and kleptomania, Bergua constructs a visual map of mental chaos materialized in physical space. The sequence of images, presented at varying speeds, generates an experience of anxiety in the viewer that reflects the nature of compulsive hoarding. Her work invites us to reflect on our own relationship with objects, on the boundaries between need and attachment, and on how the territory we inhabit can become a mirror of our mental territory. His proposal is inspired by the verses: “Under the bed... objects accumulate that we don't remember losing.” “A museum without texts or labels: the drawer of cables from broken devices.” “The box of expired medicines holds the history of ailments that no longer hurt.”

Blanca Lanaspa. Witness 176.8. Mixed media ceramics. 40.8 x 176.8 cm. 2026.

Blanca Lanaspa presents “Testigo 176.8,” a work based on the verse: "The coat rack in the entrance holds what we are before we enter and after we leave. A vertical threshold where transitions hang.“ Her proposal takes the form of a ceramic pegboard, a combinatorial board with removable pieces of different surfaces, glazes, and textures. Each element functions as a ”sensitive accident," the result of processes involving both aesthetic planning and material chance. The pieces explore states of matter: sprouts, leaks, overflows, erosions, cracked surfaces, contractions, and expansions. The tactile and interactive nature of the work invites the viewer to engage with it directly through their body. Accompanied by a mood board documenting the ceramic research process, the piece celebrates the unpredictability of materials and the beauty of the unsystematic.

Pablo Padilla Sadurni. ST. Detail. Repaired mat and acrylic. 7.1 x 7.1 x 18.7 inches. 2026.

Pablo Padilla presents “Untitled,” an architectural sculpture inspired by the verse: “The mismatched sock is not lost: it inhabits a place that does not exist.” Conceived as a spatial analogy for the search for fulfillment, the piece proposes an architectural archetype that refers to the world of ideas; an imagined place, necessary and yet unattainable. Constructed from thin cardboard, the work takes the form of impossible, labyrinthine structures inhabited by scale figures that wander through corridors, staircases, and dead-end rooms. These spaces, simultaneously tense and contemplative, combine the romanticism of introspection with the inhospitable coldness of brutalism. The work creates a surreal atmosphere that oscillates between peaceful and tense, inviting a sensory and emotional experience of shared loneliness, isolation, and the search for mental refuges that do not exist in the physical world.

Álvaro Fernández. Remember/Forget. Detail. Mixed media on canvas. 40 x 60 cm. 2026.

Álvaro Fernández presents “Remember/Forget,” a work inspired by the verse: "In the elevator mirror, two people are reflected without touching each other. What separates them is not air: it is the possibility of saying nothing." Through hybrid works that combine manual transfers on fabric with digitally altered photographs, Fernández explores silence, shared presence, and the coexistence of intimate worlds that do not touch. His transfers, made using gel plates or lavender oil, generate unstable and deteriorated images, like memories in the process of fading. The fragmentation and displacement of photographic elements multiply the scenes, creating layers of overlapping temporality. His work materializes the fragility of memories and the power of silence as a space for nonverbal intimacy.

Blanca Lanaspa. Witness 176.8. Mixed media ceramics. 40.8 x 176.8 cm. 2026.

At a time when the debate on Artificial Intelligence and artistic creation is intensifying, with positions ranging from uncritical enthusiasm to outright rejection, Nebrija University's proposal for Art Madrid'26 offers a third way, a critical stance that does not deny technological reality but clearly defends those dimensions of the artistic experience that remain irreducible to automation.

The concept of Aesthetic Intelligence proposes an epistemological alternative that recognizes the validity of forms of knowledge based on sensitivity, intuition, bodily experience, and affective resonance. These are not “minor” or subsidiary forms of knowledge with respect to rational or algorithmic knowledge, but equally valid modalities that are absolutely fundamental in the field of artistic creation.

This curatorial project thus represents a valuable contribution to the contemporary debate on technology and culture, proposing that university art education should not be limited to preparing students to adapt to the market or the tools available, but should equip them with critical skills, material sensitivity, and awareness of the specificity of their practice.

Art Madrid'26 will thus host a proposal that, beyond its individual aesthetic quality, constitutes a collective reflection on the present and future of artistic creation, on the role of educational institutions in training new generations of artists, and on the need to defend spaces for experimentation, slowness, and materiality in an accelerated and increasingly virtualized world. Through this project, Nebrija University reaffirms the irreplaceable value of Aesthetic Intelligence as a form of knowledge and as a practice of resistance against algorithmic homogenization, committing to a pedagogy that places sensory experience, bodily gesture, and affective resonance at the center as fundamental dimensions of the human condition.